Five time John sings, and One time Sherlock sings
by PearlyWhirly
Summary: "We sing when we can no longer speak".  No slash. I do not own Sherlock, John and co!
1. In the shower

**5 Times John sings, 1 time Sherlock sings.**

It's just something he's always done. Ever since he was quite young, through his school, college, university days, even during his time in the army (much to the light-hearted hilarity of his colleagues) he just couldn't keep himself from singing in the shower.

It wasn't that he thought himself a particularly good singer, and had nothing to do with the fact that he knew the humidity of a hot shower created the perfect environment for singing – it was just the one thing that truly relaxed him… In particular since he returned from Afghanistan. He found the petty, superficial issues spewed from his tiny portable TV on a daily basis only served to twist his inside into a huge, burning knot of rage. Damn it, he wasn't MEANT to be slouched in an armchair watching Jeremy Kyle, he just…knew it. Felt it. He was meant to be in control, making life-changing decisions, doing what he had worked so hard to do, saving lives…if only he could get from one side of the room to the other without having to cling to the furniture for support. If only the ugly scar on his shoulder would fade to nothing, the muscles fibres knitting back together overnight, leaving him good as new, ready and raring to go. If only, he thought to himself with a sneer that sat uncomfortably on his face. The worst thing was knowing with the devastating clarity of a medical professional that just wasn't how it worked.

Walking, running, trying to be active – things that used to give him some clarification of mind and lift his mood… now left him feeling as wound up and frustrated as being stuck indoors. The pitying glances – _stares_ – that followed him everywhere from complete strangers were torturous, let alone encounters with people he had known. The roars of joy and anger from a rugby field used to bring a nostalgic smile to his lips – now they taunted him. Another little hobby he had merely enjoyed but never taken seriously, another thing he ached to be able to do one more time.

He certainly didn't look for relaxation or comfort from a hot shower at the end of the day. It was a necessity, although his time in the army had taught him to properly appreciate those little comforts – a cup of tea, a digestive biscuit, a soft pillow…and now, the warm water beats on the back of his neck and across his tight shoulders, massaging away the knots born from holding his injured shoulder awkwardly, or having to lean heavily on his crutch when his leg decided to play up. A few minutes of blissful normality and relief. A little while of remembering how to be optimistic, hopeful, even.

He sometimes isn't even aware that there is a song tumbling from his lips, at first. It comes to him as naturally as breathing in and out.


	2. Life on Mars

**A.N: Hello all, here is part two. This one gave me all sorts of headaches and refused to play nice, so I hope it turned out fairly coherent :) John is singing Life On Mars by David Bowie, which DOES NOT BELONG TO ME, and I am not making anything at all by using it here. Have a listen if you can, because it really is beautiful. Enjoy!**

What Sherlock really, really needs right now is silence.

The sort of silence that has John shouting all sorts of things at his flatmate when he comes home to find all the clocks stopped and absolutely everything unplugged, including the fridge.

He yearns for all those little electrical hisses and buzzes to cease, to stop clawing at the edges of his mind, where he is consumed with the problem at hand; A man who takes his girlfriend out to the cinema…spends two and a half hours with her in a shadowy, darkened room…then walks out and throttles her in broad daylight. Then kills himself not 20 yards away.

So many ideas and possibilities are colliding and twisting painfully before his inner eye, so many pictures, pictures of the bodies, the bruises, the contents of their pockets, the contents of their stomachs, whipping backwards and forwards without order and out of focus and he just can't, can't gain control, can't…

_"It's a God-awful small affair…to the girl with the mousy hair…"_

…can't locate the pivotal points, can't find the end of the tangle…Whyhadhe howdidhe hadshe whatifshe…

_"But her Mummy is yelling 'No', and her Daddy has told her to go…"_

And the biggest question, the most crucial to the investigation, the one that needed to be answered RIGHT NOW… why won't John shut up?

_"But her friend is nowhere to be seen…Now she walks through her sunken dream…"_

Every strum of the guitar seems to roar through the flat and join the melee of noise grating agonizingly between Sherlock's ears. Among them is John's voice. It's not that it is a bad voice…in fact, Sherlock finds himself struggling not to turn his full attention to it's raw warmth…the problem is that he needs it to not be there at all right now, because he's trying to concentrate and…

_"To the seat with the clearest view, and now she's hooked to the silver screen…"_

No, concentrate, CONCENTRATE. They both leave the cinema, walk 100 yards down the road, they begin to argue, he strangles her in the middle of a busy street and then commits suicide using her medication. What started the argument? Is it relevant? Why…

_"But the film is a saddening bore…for she's lived it ten times or more…"_

He needs silence.

He. Needs. Silence. Now.

_"She could spit in the eyes of fools, as they ask her to focus on…"_

Propelled by the burning frustration coursing through his veins, Sherlock launches himself wildly off his bed and out through the kitchen…

_"Sailors fighting in the dancehall…"_

In his red mist, he knocks one of his beakers off the kitchen table and sends it flying. It collides with the wall with a smash that rings in Sherlock's ears and makes him wince as the shattered pieces tumble earthward, and he can hear each piece as it claws down the wall, like nails on a black board, and he can hear it when they crack and splinter again when they hit the linoleum and the noise isn't stopping, it just goes on and on and on and his temples are beginning to throb and John doesn't even flinch….

_"Oh man, look at those cavemen go…It's the freakiest show…"_

He is suddenly rather glad John is facing away from him, since he can now feel an uncomfortable, aching burn of blood in his cheeks from the anti-climactic nature of his entrance. John is completely ignoring him, after all, and the noise hasn't stopped. And now Sherlock is going to actually have to tell John that he needs to Go And Make That Racket Somewhere Else and Don't You Have Shopping To Do? And Sherlock is really, really angry now because actually, he realises as he stands there surrounded by broken glass, now he is here, he doesn't really want John to stop.

All of a sudden something happens to him that only happens very rarely, and Sherlock hates it. He is overwhelmed. His frustration, his changes of mood, the growing pain behind his eyes, the beaker that needs replacing, the noise that is both intrusive and yet so... What is it? Just to top things off, he doesn't know. He has no idea at all why he has completely gone off the idea of ripping the guitar out of John's hands, breaking it across his knee and throwing the thing out the window, and would rather curl up on the sofa and listen to John sing for the rest of his life. He doesn't know. Today is clearly a bad day for Knowing Things, he thinks.

For a fraction of a second, he actually wants to cry.

He doesn't cry. Instead, he pads across the room – hesitantly, like a toddler who hasn't quite got the hang of walking yet – and awkwardly slides down to the floor beside John's armchair. John keeps playing.

_"Take a look at the law man beating up the wrong guy, oh man, wonder if he'll ever know…"_

A humourless smirk creeps onto Sherlock's lips. Will he ever know indeed? Balling his fists in his hair, he squeezes his eyes shut and allows himself to be carried away by the music for a moment, the ebb and sway of the undulating chords and the softness of John's tone actually taking away burning in the corners of his eyes, and soothing the throbbing in his skull.

_"He's in the bestselling show…Is there life on Mars?"_

He takes a deep breath, rubs his eyes, and steeples his fingers, long legs curled up under his chin.

But the bottle of pills wasn't on him when he died…she had it…

And it is only now, now that there is quiet in his head, and in the pit of his stomach, that everything falls into place.

Oh.

She was bored of her mediocre, uninteresting life, immersed herself in the drama of films, the isolation, the longing, the combination was dangerous, so she drugs him, bored, curious, not meaning to overdose, he feels the effects, she confesses in a fit of guilt, enraged, he kills her, staggers away, and dies.

The only explanation of all the facts.

"John," he cries, leaping to his feet and gripping his flatmate by the shoulders, "you're a genius!"

John stops playing for a moment to do his Baffled face and murmur "if you say so" as he sets his guitar down. He decides he will never understand his eccentric friend as he watches him curl up his lanky form on the floor again.

"Sherlock…should we not…call Lestrade?"

"In a minute."

"What are we waiting for?"

Sherlock doesn't answer, but John thinks he knows. It is worth a shot. He takes up his guitar and resumes his song.

As the final notes fizzle away into companionable silence, Sherlock fishes his phone from his inside pocket, and John has to strain his ears to catch what he mumbles next.

"Now we can call Lestrade."


	3. Amazing Grace

A.N: *Waves* Thanks ever so much for being patient, lovely readers – new job ate into my time somewhat! But this WILL get finished in the very near future, I assure you. And so, onwards!

WARNING: Off-screen character death. And I got a bit carried away with this one, I fear.

Lily Watson had never liked wearing hats. They didn't suit her, for one thing, and for another she didn't care for the sort of up-market fashion that required the wearing of a hat. If she had had the money, she would have liked to have experimented with them, maybe, spent hours and hours in the shops surrounded by a gaggle of faceless assistants as she tried them all on and twirled about in front of a mirror and didn't even look at the price tag. But it wasn't to be.

She had been expected to wear a hat on this occasion, and luckily she had found one she could tolerate. It was small and plain and black and had a veil. That was the bit she really liked. She had spent most of her life hiding. She wasn't about to stop now that her daughter had finally gone the same way as the man who made her feel she needed to hide in the first place.

John looked so much like Him. She had looked her son in the eye once so far, from across the car park as he got out of a shiny black Mercedes that didn't look as though it belonged to him, and the awful sensation of wanting to run, and hide, and never see that face again was overwhelming. But she let him come to her, and wrap his arms around her, and she held him while he tried not to cry. Because that's what mothers do, no matter what or who your child reminds you of, and at least while she was holding him she didn't have to look into her husband's eyes.

They didn't really talk much. Old habits die hard, and learning to be quiet and do as you're told from a man who would break your nose if you didn't had left its mark on Mrs. Watson and her youngest child. Instead they did as they'd always done – until the suffocation of home life led John away to study medicine in the city – stuck to each other's side and smiled like everything was fine. Mostly. The situation didn't require much smiling, which was a relief in a way, because neither of them really wanted to lie any more.

Lily knew people, friends, who'd lost a child before their time. Some of them were here today – patting her shoulder and making sure she had fresh tissues to hand, finally a way to show her how they were thankful for her cups of tea and open arms and, most importantly, a friendly ear. From those hours spent in their kitchens, Lily had gathered that services of this sort tended to pass by in a blur. This one didn't.

It wasn't that she was acutely aware of what was going on – she didn't really register what Father Robbins was saying, or when she was supposed to stand up and sing. It was her daughter's coffin – sat there in front of her. For hours and hours and hours and days and months and she knew years were going by in what were supposed to be minutes, years and years of agony, staring at a wooden box.

But the years came to an end, as years always do. Her brave little soldier put his arm around her and, although the congregation were singing, she could only hear his voice.

"_Amazing grace, how sweet the sound_

_That saved a wretch like me_

_I once was lost, but now I'm found_

_Was blind but now I see."_

She looked him in the eyes again, then. Just for a few moments she watched Hurt and Hope dance together, watched the story of a life re-built, watched a different man, a good man, shine through those eyes, and when she looked back the box had gone.

Afterwards, when the last of the guests had sniffled their condolences and driven away, John led her over to the Mercedes and a tall, sullen-looking man leaning up against it, hunched against the chill November breeze. His sharp, quick eyes flashed over her as they approached, and she involuntarily cringed away. John slipped his hand into hers again, and gave it a gentle squeeze. She knew immediately that this man was no threat.

"Mum, this is my friend and colleague, Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock, my mother Lily."

The man – Sherlock – smiled. It was a small smile, but he had the sort of face that didn't look as though it smiled all that often, and it warmed Lily to see it. In turn, he held himself with the sort of guarded air of someone who isn't smiled at very often. Lily gave him a smile.

"How do you do, Mrs. Watson?" He proffered a slim, steady hand and as Lily took it, he bowed his head to drop a ghost of a kiss where her wedding ring had once been.

"You must be very proud of John." She considered her son again. He looked so peaceful. Calm, and grounded. All trace of her husband's memory had slid away from his features.

"I am."


End file.
